After weeks of viral internet stardom, Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer talk about how their dynamic shape display works and where they see the technology going into the future.

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In early November, two MIT PhD students, Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer, introduced an eye-catching project from the MIT Media Lab: A table built with motors, linkages and pins, that can render a person physically in real time via a digital source. Some articles hailed the technology with potential to change the world and others were captivated by its strange, almost science fiction-type quality. The consensus was that this thing was really, really cool. But for a concept so complex, the initial idea came from a simple beginning.

"We were inspired by those pinscreen toys where you press your hand on one end, and it shows on the other side," Leithinger says. However, the 15-by-15-inch table, known as inFORM, is much more complicated than a toy. Leithinger says it's best to imagine the device as a pinscreen, but with each pin attached to an individual motor. That's 900 pins, each a half-inch wide, with 900 separate motors. Getting 900 motors in such a dense area was a challenge, Follmer says.

The choice for the motors came down to function and how Leithinger and Follmer wanted the table to work. They knew they wanted inFORM to be an interactive and perceptive process, meaning they wanted users to physically shape the table as well. The duo decided on the kind of motors that power faders, which are commonly used on audio mixing boards and cost $20 to $30 each. These motors are pretty weak, though, so Leithinger and Follmer used linkages—long cables that reduce friction. Each motor is then controlled by a custom circuit board with a microcontroller, which is then connected to a computer.

"By moving these pins up and down with computer control, we can form a shape," Leithinger says. "That shape can be a three-dimensional model you load from a computer, it can be a user interface, or it can be a shape of a remote person."

The most complex feat the inFORM can accomplish is the last one—rendering a person or object remotely. For this, the tangible media team decided to use a standard Xbox Kinect, a sensor typically used for motion-intensive gaming, to capture a person's movement. A mounted projector also displays color.

When setting out to create the inFORM display, Leithinger and Follmer—along with Hiroshi Ishii, professor and associate director of the MIT Media Laboratory—had a clear goal. "We really see this as a research platform where we can just quickly prototype things," Leithinger says. Instead of waiting a few minutes or hours for a 3D printer to create a design or using even slower traditional methods of prototyping, testing out different scenarios can happen instantaneously.

Leithinger and Follmer also envisioned practical application in urban planning and CAD modeling, though currently in a lower resolution, where designers could physically manipulate their creations and changes would be reflected on their digital compositions.

But the prototype device could also be a boon for other industries and areas that the creators never intended. "We've been excited to hear how people have responded to the project," Follmer says, explaining the many emails he's received with different ideas on how to apply inFORM to other spaces. "One person said we should apply it to musical interfaces and another person said it would be great to use to help blind children understand art and other things. These are things we didn't even think about."